


no refunds!! or: finding love in a bottle of shitty italian wine

by MrPenguln2



Category: New Game! (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Comedy, F/F, Misunderstandings, New Game!! Rarepair, Rare Pairings, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, The First Time On The Internet Anyone Shipped Rin And Umiko
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21817309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrPenguln2/pseuds/MrPenguln2
Summary: Hazuki plans a dinner date with Umiko, against Umiko's wishes. When Umiko gets stood up, she runs into Rin, who was also stood up by Ko that same night. They decide to have dinner together instead, and forge an unexpected bond with each other. Meanwhile, Hazuki and Ko conspire to make amends with their respective quasiromantic work friends. Various background antics from the rest of the cast.
Relationships: Ahagon Umiko/Hazuki Shizuku, Ahagon Umiko/Touyama Rin, Touyama Rin/Yagami Kou
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. an obtrusive question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hazuki plans a dinner date with Umiko, against Umiko's wishes.

Hazuki burst in. She swung her arm in the style of a major league pitch and thrust her pointed finger forward. "Umiko!" she declared, "Please fall in love with me!"

Umiko blinked and blew a strand of hair out of her face. "What?" she asked. She was too tired to acknowledge her boss, or mentally register her ridiculous request. Her fingers went clickety-clack against the keyboard, pounding out code and filling the scanlines of her dark-theme C++ IDE bit by bit.

Hazuki had kicked the door to Umiko's cubicle open, stepped forward and shouted her egregious demand loud enough that they probably heard her all the way in character design.

(In fact, they had. Ko, spinning in her spinny chair and procrastinating, heard the pleas of Hazuki's heart echo faintly all the way across the floor. She snickered.)

The cubicle door then slapped against the wall and pivoted gently back into place, coming to rest against Hazuki's body. She held her pose firm, hoping that Umiko would turn around and marvel at her. She'd worked for so long (almost ten minutes!) to perfect her grand entrance. She cleared her throat, hoping Umiko would catch a hint.

Umiko did not. She merely yawned and continued to type. Her tired eyes flickered across the neon-green mosaic of glyphs, operators and delimiters that populated her computer screen.

Hazuki frowned, elbowed the door out of her way and sulked over to Umiko's desk. "I mean just what I said!" she elaborated, "I need you to fall in love with me. As soon as possible, if it isn't any inconvenience."

"Every word out of your mouth is an inconvenience to me," Umiko said flatly.

"Don't be mean," Hazuki whined. She sat against the edge of Umiko's desk and took a mug of hot coffee that had been sitting next to Umiko's keyboard. It had a little airsoft decal on it that said something like 'I'd Rather Be Shooting'.

Hazuki liked to touch hot things. The mug warmed her palms pleasantly, and she blew across the placid surface of the coffee it held. It looked delicious. Light, steamy - some kind of mocha? Clouds of creamer billowed beneath the surface of the brew.

Umiko's fingers continued to click, and to clack. Bursts of the staccato rhythm swelled from her desktop like breathing, with long interludes between storms of typing. If she noticed that Hazuki had stolen her coffee, she showed no sign of it.

She glanced in Hazuki's direction, but maybe there was just something in her eye.

"I'm waiting for an answer, darling," Hazuki chided. "It's really very important to me that we get this settled. Time is money, you know."

"I don't see what any kind of romance has to do with my productivity."

"You will," Hazuki shrugged cutely. She sipped Umiko's coffee and choked, feeling like she'd just sipped liquid hot cane sugar.

It tasted like a shot of plain half-and-half, straight from the carton, and microwaved. It tasted like whipped cream poured into a glass of water and brought to a boil. It tasted like what Hajime's heart must taste like - it was really, really, _really_ _sweet_.

"W-was this ever even coffee to begin with??" Hazuki sputtered.

Umiko may have even grinned. She withdrew her hands from her keyboard and pushed her spinny chair away from the desk.

"I mean, my God," Hazuki went on, "It's _intolerably_ sweet. I don't know how you can stand it."

Umiko stood and stretched her muscles. She carefully removed the mug from Hazuki's hands and replaced it on her desk.

Hazuki leered over Umiko's shoulder, realizing something. "Though I suppose it makes sense. After all - a tough-hearted, reserved, strong-but-silent type like yourself? What else could you possibly desire but a sweetheart?"

Umiko's eyes twitched. She pushed Hazuki's face away. "I'm not in the mood to have my coffee psychoanalyzed right now-,"

"Someone _tender_ ," Hazuki spoke over her, "Someone _warm_ , someone so sickeningly sweet that she counterbalances your own bitter, brutish exterior - ah! How romantic~"

Hazuki sashayed back and forth, imagining in a cutesy, sing-songy voice all sorts of little things about Umiko's destined sweeter-than-sugar lover. She touched her own face and gave out little 'Oo's and 'Ah!'s as she tittered around the cubicle.

Umiko stepped carefully around Hazuki, maneuvering and directing her in such a way as to lead her right out the door. Hazuki was too lost in her silly little romantisation to notice her own departure.

"And when you meet, and you make coffee together for the first time, and you accidentally swap mugs, and you like yours sweet but she likes hers bitter - Oh! So perfect~..." She went wandering into the distance, continuing to sing the praises of love, coffee, and imaginary sweethearts.

Umiko closed the door. She turned around and rested with her back flat against it. She sighed, relieved and worn-out. She stretched out her back again, reaching her arms high up over her head. "I sit too much for my own good..." she mumbled to herself.

She wanted to go shooting again. She sat back at her desk, picked up her mug, cleaned off a bit of Hazuki's lipstick that had smudged the 'I'd Rather Be Shooting' airsoft decal, and took a long sip of her coffee.

The Umiko family recipe goes like this: 49% milk, 49% cream, 3% coffee. It doesn't add up because you're meant to spill some down the side of the mug, and you have to lick it up before it drips onto the table, or else Pa will make you clean every counter in the kitchen.

Umiko smiled. For a moment, everything was peaceful in her cubicle yet again.

Hazuki burst in. "Don't distract me any further!" she announced, extending the same major league point.

A vein in Umiko's forehead pulsed. "Just use the handle like a normal person!" she barked, swinging around in her chair. "You'll break the door if you keep kicking it like that!"

Hazuki hadn't been expecting so immediate and articulate a complaint, and, startled, awkwardly replaced the door in its jam. She carefully hover-handed its hinges and inspected it superficially for damage, hemming and hawwing as she went about it. Umiko huffed and swung back around to her computer.

Hazuki sheepishly trotted back to her place sitting against the lip of Umiko's desk and took a few breaths to recenter herself. "...Anyway," she cleared her throat. "Back to the matter at hand. Umiko, please fall in love with me."

"No."

Hazuki pretended to dry her own tears. "Don't be cruel... I really need you to. Really, I do."

Umiko turned in her chair and regarded Hazuki. Hazuki pretended not to notice. She gazed all around Umiko's cubicle, seemingly admiring all the little toy guns, bullets, posters, and airsoft memorabilia. She whistled innocently.

Umiko weighed her options. _Dare I...?_

She dared. She leaned forward and spidered her fingers together in front of her. Her eyes stayed on Hazuki like a naturalist watching a dangerous animal, waiting for the moment it would leap out and attack. She squinted.

After a final moment's deliberation, she did something that she always regretted doing: she gave Hazuki the power to answer a question. "...Why?"

It caught Hazuki's attention away from a western military movie poster. She clapped her hands together. "I've decided to change the specs of _Peco_. I believe I can evade any forehead flicks and other repercussions if you fall in love with me first."

Umiko hardly heard the rest of Hazuki's statement after _'change the specs'_. War-style flashbacks of the last five spec-changes played over her eyes. Her terror crystallized into anger. She closed her eyes and sat up very, very straight in her chair.

Her voice was ice, and also fire. Icefire. "...What kind of changes?"

Hazuki saw the death grip with which Umiko's hands were clutching her own legs. She slid a step back. "N-now, now," she laughed, and instinctually brought her hand to her forehead, for protection. "Let's not be hasty. First: do you love me?"

"No."

Hazuki pouted. "Not even a little bit? Maybe in a parental, mentoral sense?"

Umiko narrowed her eyes. She chewed the inside of her mouth. She wanted to know how many nights next week she was going to lose to this nonsense.

Hazuki grinned devilishly. "Or maybe a little bit in a romantic, crushing sort of way? Like the kind of feelings an underclassmen catches for her senpai-?"

Umiko snatched an airsoft gun from behind her computer and unloaded a clip at Hazuki's feet. She danced around in her heels to avoid the spray, crying "Hey-ey-ey!" all the while. When the gun had been emptied Umiko tossed it aside and Hazuki clutched her desk, and her stomach, breathing hard.

She gasped, and swallowed. "Fine, fine, I get it," she said, holding her hand up in surrender, and also to block any more bullets Umiko might've had. "I can tell when I'm not wanted." She straightened her clothing and brushed the front of her dress. "I'll be back later." She made for the door.

Umiko's slammed her palm against the wall, her arm blocking Hazuki's path. She'd gotten out of her chair and across the tiny cubicle in the blink of an eye. Hazuki gulped and took a step back, and Umiko's other arm came up and blocked Hazuki from behind. She was pinned against the wall, behind Umiko's strong, steaming arms.

Hazuki blushed. "U-Umiko...how forward~"

Umiko leaned in close. Her hair fell in front of her face. Hazuki tilted her head away, exposing her smooth, fair neck to Umiko. Umiko slowly brought her chin down, close, closer-- until her lips were almost kissing Hazuki's collarbone.

Hazuki tried to suppress her horny smile. She began to sweat. This was more than she could have ever possibly hoped for--

Umiko whispered, _"...Tell me the spec changes."_ The fury on her breath boiled the air against Hazuki's neck and killed her ladyboner.

Now Hazuki was sweating for a different reason. She turned back to face Umiko. Umiko lifted her eyes to meet her. Hazuki forced a smile as innocent as she could manage. She lifted her hand and gently patted it against Umiko's cheek. She pinched her. "D-don't you worry your pretty little head about it," she insisted.

Umiko narrowed her eyes, but withdrew her arms and freed Hazuki. Hazuki fell away from the wall and just barely caught herself before falling flat on her face. She straightened herself again and focused on breathing, and calming herself. Umiko returned to her desk.

When Hazuki had recentered herself, she cleared her throat and waved her hand dismissively. "Really, it's nothing major," she promised, "I still need to figure out some of the details myself, actually."

"I don't believe that for a second." Umiko replied, reseating herself and getting back to work. She swept one hand over her shoulder and brushed her hair behind her back.

"I'll just have to wait until you fall in love with me. Then I can be sure to avoid any punishment for these minor, _minor_ changes."

Umiko ignored her, "I think all of your ideas come to you fully formed and perfectly specified," she said, "each a grand, flawless stroke upon the painting of your latest project."

Hazuki paused. She placed one hand against her chest and spoke softly, "Umiko, I didn't know you thought so grandly of me."

"It's true," Umiko continued, as disinterestedly as if she was just discussing the weather. "Your ideas all arrive into your brain perfectly made and perfectly fashioned, in exactly such a way as to make the most work for me," she spat, "and to piss me off in the greatest way possible."

Hazuki chuckled nervously. "-uh,"

"Brought to you by a little demon that crafts all the things that bring me strife," Umiko interrupted. She made herself more angry the further she contemplated these things.

Hazuki stepped carefully back to the door. "Yes, well, uh-,"

Umiko was just mumbling furiously to herself at this point. Her eye twitched, and her typing grew more violent and frantic. "You are the agent of the demon that has been assigned to torment me until I die."

"You seem like you're _busy_ ," Hazuki decided, clapping her hands and bowing quickly. "I'll go ahead and let you get back to work."

She zipped down the hall and disappeared, letting the door fall shut behind her. It closed with a pleasant little _click_.

Everything was calm. Umiko stopped typing and took a few deep breaths. She took her coffee and drained it in one long swig, and gently held the little airsoft mug in her hands. All its residual warmth passed into her palms.

She set it down, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed at her eyes until all she could see was a spotted quiltwork of shimmering color.

When it faded, she saw Hazuki leaning over the wall of her cubicle behind her desk, watching her. She waved with a little ruffle of her fingers.

For a moment, Umiko was convinced she had died and woken up in purgatory. "Wh-?" she gasped.

Hazuki had exited the cubicle, walked a few yards around it, and now leaned against the outside wall. She was just tall enough to rest her arms atop the wall and peer over them. She smiled sweetly - an expression that betrayed her nefarious, romantic intent.

She turned up the charm, flipped her hair over one shoulder, and spoke casually. "Hey, Umiko, I found this great new restaurant a few miles east of here the other day. I couldn't believe I'd never been there before. It is absolutely to die for."

Umiko held her face in her hands, pulling it down to the floor, yanking her cheeks and eyelids taut. Her dry pupils watched Hazuki with intent. She released her face with a snap and blinked, and rubbed at her eye with one palm.

She was so tired.

"It's a very high-class establishment. Very bougie, you know," Hazuki went on, running her hands across the rim of Umiko's cubicle wall. "You see it on the street and you know: the host is a connoisseur of the _finer_ things."

Umiko fruitlessly tried to return to her typing. "I fail to see what that has to do with me," she said, ignoring Hazuki's pretentious ramblings.

"Well you should let me take you to dinner, of course!" Hazuki elegantly ran an arm through her hair and swung it all to one side, over her shoulder and over her chest. She embraced it like she was dancing with her lover. "We can go to dinner, we can go _dancing_ ," she dreamed, swooning to herself. She stepped back and forth, swaying to an invisible jazz chorus.

Umiko rolled her eyes. She crossed the two streams of language in her brain and accidentally typed the word 'dancing' into her program. She slapped her backspace key and chewed at her lower lip. She sniffed sharply.

Hazuki continued to dream. "Our blushing cheeks and tender embraces framed by the light of naught but the moon and twelve designer candles - ah! How romantic. And I'll be able to make you fall in love with me!" she giggled, appreciating how grand and clever her own little plan was. "How does tonight at eight sound?"

"Who makes dinner plans for a Thursday night?" Umiko asked.

Hazuki ignored her. She teased the pretty, pointed chin of the imaginary lover in her hair. "The place is called _Tesori d'Amore_. It's a _very_ high-class establishment. Wear something elegant, like a backless dress."

Umiko began typing louder and louder, as loud as she could, to try and block out Hazuki's voice.

To no avail. Like a fire alarm, she droned on with agonizing clarity: "And do something with your hair, too. Maybe a nice bun." Hazuki blushed and blew steam out of her nose. The mental image of a ballroom-ready Umiko delighted all her senses.

She giggled to herself, deep in her chest. Lecherously. Her glasses fogged up. "And something lacy underneath," she added, "for me to discover later~"

Umiko interrupted, "There is no way in hell I'm doing that."

"You _have_ to," Hazuki rebutted, with a sudden iron in her voice. At the same time, she spun on her heel and gave Umiko the Serious Eyes. "As your boss, I _order_ you to let me take you to dinner."

Umiko eyed her. Trying to gauge if Hazuki was being serious, or if she was just playing some kind of long, convoluted joke. With Hazuki, it could be either. It could be both.

Hazuki, without taking her eyes off of Umiko, kissed the cheek of the imaginary lover in her hair, which she still held in her arms.

Umiko couldn't tell. Usually, that meant that Hazuki really was being serious. She grimaced and groaned internally. Then, she grimaced and groaned externally. " _Mm_..."

Hazuki smiled and giggled. She dropped her hair and returned to leaning against Umiko's cubicle. "No worries, love," she promised, reaching out to pat Umiko's head.

Umiko met her palm with the tip of an airsoft gun. Her eyes were slitted in a deadly stare. "Touch my hair and you die."

Hazuki yoinked her hand back with a snap and forced a polite chuckle, running her hand over the back of her neck to disguise the fear-sweat that had spawned there. "Aha- _ha_ -..."

She spun on her heel and left, tossing her hand over her shoulder and letting it bounce in her wake. "We'll figure something out~" she called, waving her hand airily as she finally, graciously walked away, leaving Umiko to her work.

Umiko watched her leave. She savored every step as Hazuki traipsed gleefully down the corridor between cubicles and disappeared around a corner. As her last silver hair slipped out of view, Umiko felt the tension in her upper back and shoulders melt away.

She sighed with such relief that she almost moaned. She fell backwards against her computer chair and slumped into it, rightfully spent for the day.

As she rounded the corridor, Hazuki thought aloud. "It's too bad Umiko can't make it to dinner tonight."

" _You'll always have me_ ," whispered the imaginary lover in Hazuki's hair. Hazuki grinned and caressed a handful of her hair, smooching it gratefully. Her hair hummed happily and said, " _Just focus on what we're in this for_."

The image of an elegant, ballroom-ready Umiko filled Hazuki's mind again. It filled her with butterflies and determination. She pumped her fist, wiped at her nosebleed, and continued walking. She pointed to the sky and shouted, "Back to work!" and spooked an intern that was just rounding a corner.

Umiko also had in her mind the image of an elegant, ballroom-ready Umiko, and it left a sour taste in her mouth. An expensive, collared backless dress, deep forest green, with something shiny sewn into the fabric and a slit down one leg, exposing her lacy black garters. Her hair all done up in a neat bun, and her whole body awash in a soft, candlelit glow.

Disgusting.

Umiko swallowed bitterly and shook her head free of the image. She finally returned to her typing with purpose, and struck the newline key several times consecutively. "There is no way I'm doing that," she whispered through grit teeth.

=======

"Why the hell did I do this?" Umiko whispered through grit teeth, holding back an eruption of fire and expletives.

Umiko was sitting alone in _Tesori d'Amore_ , at a candlelit table for two, clutching the fanciest, laminated-est, leather-bounded-est menu she'd ever seen in her life. It was 8:25, and she'd been sitting there for thirty minutes.

Wearing a green backless dress.


	2. a shitty chardonnay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umiko practices killing people by thinking about them from far away. Hazuki reads a manga at home. Umiko runs into Rin at dinner.

Like the Sun, Umiko's anger radiated out of her body in all directions, burning the fringe of her fancy tablecloth and melting spoons to the table. Her anger could be felt from the pizza place across the street, and it could be seen from space. She'd run out of veins in her forehead to bulge, and had moved to hammering her heel into the floor. Maybe she could tunnel away so she wouldn't have to walk out the front door in front of everyone else, alone and ashamed and not having even ordered anything.

The dimly lit restaurant was packed densely with tables and waitstaff, but they orbited outside a definite radius around Umiko’s table, sensing and avoiding her rage. One brave soul, through courage or cluelessness, dared to enter the forbidden zone of immediate annihilation: a shy waitress with big, round glasses. "Excuse me, m-miss?"

Umiko jumped, and the anger around her table evaporated. She'd been too focused on trying to melt a hole through her menu with her eyes to notice the waitress approach. "...Yes?"

The waitress’s shoulders jumped as Umiko’s powerful eyes drifted to her and she hid behind her little notebook. "D-did you want to go ahead and order, or-?"

"I'll wait a little longer, thank you," Umiko interrupted. She wanted to be left alone again, to practice gaining the ability to kill people by thinking angrily about them from far away.

The waitress nodded graciously. "Of course, ma'am. Shall I bring you another bottle of wine?"

She gestured to the bottle that Umiko had already drained two glasses from. It was a cheap chardonnay and it tasted like shit. Umiko sighed. "...Please."

"Right away, ma'am." The waitress disappeared into the throng of bourgeoisie that filled the candlelit dining room. Umiko slouched in her chair, and got a scratch as her bare back caught upon a sharp wooden edge. She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her hands. Dispirited.

Her eyebrow twitched. _Shizuku, you insufferable menace,_ she spat in her mind. It was one thing to get stood up - that part she didn't mind as much. Umiko hadn’t had a quiet evening out in a while. She could treat herself to a nice dinner, get some nice drinks. It might’ve been fun, even.

But it was another thing entirely to get stood up by Hazuki. The only reason Umiko was here to begin with was on her orders. _Wearing this stupid dress..._ she picked at the silky fabric on her knee. _Wearing this stupid bun..._ she scratched at her hair. _What a waste of time._

She tried not to think about the fifty minutes she'd spent watching YouTube tutorials on how to put her hair up. She also tried not to think about the hairdresser she’d ultimately visited, who’d gotten it done in ten.

Forget the fancy dinner - all tonight had been to Umiko was one more thing to tolerate for a few hours. But it was a few hours she could have spent working on these damned supposed spec-changes, instead of playing Hazuki's silly little game.

'At least after dinner I'll finally learn what the spec-changes _are_ , and then I can get to work,' Umiko had thought to herself. But now, the Giant Rat That Made All The Rules herself hadn't even shown up.

Umiko huffed. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and muttered, "Where the hell is that silver demon anyway...?"

=====

Hazuki was enjoying a quiet, relaxing night at home. Curled up in her favorite green recliner, while Mozuku lounged on her footrest, she read a yuri shoujo manga by the light of a skinny lamp over her shoulder. She smiled to herself on a particularly sweet page.

"Mozuku, listen to this," she began, "This girl's senpai joked about making dinner plans with her, and she took them seriously, showed up for dinner, and got stood up - all the while the senpai was left completely unaware. She's been trying to win back the forgiveness and love of her kouhai this entire story."

She lifted the manga and showed Mozuku a lovely illustration of two young girls kissing. "On this page, they finally get back together and kiss! Ah~...so romantic."

Hazuki leaned forward, preparing for a theatrical retelling. She cleared her throat. "The senpai says, 'I should never have been so reckless with your heart. I was terrible to you… How could you ever forgive me?'" Hazuki read, making her voice into a gravelly, sensual growl to match the cool, teasing personality of the senpai - now brought low by the sheer ignominy of her crimes against lesbanity.

She wiggled her hands and kicked her feet under her blanket with glee. "And the kouhai touches her face, pulls her close, and says," she switched to a higher, more innocent, sweet-hearted register, "'I _could_... if you take me to dinner first.'"

Hazuki let out a bark of laughter and clapped her hands together, applauding the manga and the kouhai for being so cheeky. She sighed dreamily as she closed the book on her thumb. "Why can't real life ever work like that, Mozuku?"

"Oh, Shizuku, you incorrigible rat," Mozuku meowed. "Can't you see that you've mistakenly perpetuated the same crime against your beloved Ahagon?"

Hazuki chuckled. "Mozuku, you meow so loudly," she chided. "Sometimes you sound like a real person."

"Will I ever be free from your clutches, you vile old woman?" Mozuku meowed.

"Nya, nya nya," Hazuki teased in reply. "Hush up, you noisy boy." She turned and reached down to her stack of yuri manga and pulled out another, much saucier title. Her glasses flashed in the lamplight and her ears burned bright red. "What do you say we turn up the heat?" she giggled.

=====

A little balled-up napkin sat on the table. Two corks approached, moving as if they were a pair of walking feet. Umiko was holding them by their ends and walking them around the table, bouncing them back and forth like they were the legs of a soccer player. She made all the little sounds of a grunting, exercising athlete under her breath. "Hh-, hup! Hm, hyaa-," she murmured to herself, immersed in her imaginary game.

The cork player went in for the kill. Umiko pounded the corks against the table and rapidly ran towards the napkin ball, and gave it a swift kick. It went sailing between two empty wineglasses on the other side of the table. Umiko raised the corks into the air victoriously.

 _"Gooooooooal-"_ she whispered. She was a little tipsy.

The waitress with the round glasses returned with a bottle of wine. "Okay, here's your second chardonnay, um... are you ready to order-?" she asked, looking up from her little waitress Carrying Plate™. She found she’d interrupted Umiko running the corks around the lip of her table in a glorious victory lap. Umiko was frozen in place, corks held mid-gallop, face rapidly reddening.

The waitress hesitated. She set the new, unopened wine down next to the first bottle on the table, and bowed deeply. "I'll return in a moment," she said, and vanished into the murky dining room as quickly as she'd appeared.

Umiko sighed, and set down the corks. She wanted to crawl under her table and die. She wanted to go home, break out her BBs and shoot her sorrows into a cubic meter of foam target. But more than anything, she wanted to find Hazuki and throttle her by the neck.

Umiko clicked her tongue. _No... that silver witch would probably enjoy it,_ she thought.

She sighed, too tired to get really angry again. That little burst had rekindled the flames of fury at the base of her stomach, but she'd already burned out her whole store of rage. Now she was set on a low hate-simmer.

Umiko picked up her menu and perused it half-heartedly, looking for the cheapest entrée she could stomach. She didn't want to buy anything, but she also didn't want to waste the time of the waitstaff by holding a table for thirty minutes without buying anything.

More than anything, she didn't want to spend three thousand yen on a six-ounce sirloin. _Jesus..._ she winced. _If Hazuki were here, I wouldn't be paying a dime._

She poured herself another glass of wine, the last of what was in the first bottle. It was the cheapest wine they'd had and it tasted like shit, but Umiko got it for sentimental reasons.

It was a brand from Okinawa. They used to sell it at the gas station across the corner from Umiko's house. It was her first taste of alcohol when she was young, as well as her first legal taste of alcohol when she turned twenty. Both times, the bitter taste made her whole face tighten up like a raisin and everyone laughed.

She hated it. But Pa loved the stuff, and so it was always in the house. When she moved to japan, Umiko kept buying it, and kept hating it. It never failed to remind her of home.

Little comfort that was now, after the night she'd been having. She took a long, slow sip, and winced at the taste, stifling a gag. Thirty minutes in - thirty minutes of waiting for that silver demon - and the first bottle was already gone. Maybe she could drink through the second bottle, black out and forget that tonight ever happened.

It wouldn't, though. She'd sipped far stiffer drinks in far less time in the past and been perfectly fine. "Curse my ability to hold my alcohol..." she mused aloud. A salaryman chuckled empathetically at a nearby table. Umiko didn't notice.

Umiko swished her wine around in one hand and flipped through the pages of her menu with the other. She narrowed her eyes. _Why are none of these dinner descriptions in Japanese...?_

"Umiko-san?"

Umiko's nearly leapt out of her skin. Instead, she leapt into her menu to hide. It tented atop her head; she looked like a turtle. She’d dropped her wineglass in the mad dash. It bounced and wobbled against the table, spilling over and staining the fancy white tablecloth.

The _last_ thing Umiko wanted right now was to be recognized in the state that she was in: backless ballroom dress, black lace underneath, hair all up in a pretty little bun. She was disgusted with herself.

But that voice sounded familiar. She caved to her curiosity and peered out from beneath the menu on her head. _Hazuki? No..._

"...Toyama-san?"

Rin Toyama stood a step away from Umiko's table. She was wearing an elegant backless dress, colored a deep, vibrant maroon. A slit cut in the front plunged deep over her appreciable bust. It held Umiko's attention for a hot second. _Jesus..._ she wondered how Rin managed not to burst out of her dress every time she breathed.

Rin's hand came up to her face, bringing Umiko's attention with it. She touched her cheek and smiled. "Ah, it _is_ you! I almost didn't recognize you," she took a step closer and brought her hands together in a cute little clap. "You look stunning, Umiko-san. I love your hair."

Umiko snatched the menu from her head and replaced it gently on the table. She instinctually brought her hand to her face, attempting to hide her eyes. Her fingers instead found a lock of hair hanging by her ear, and she twirled it around and around and around. "Y-yes, well," she stammered, almost too quiet to hear. She bit her tongue to keep herself from blushing (this failed), "U-uh, um, uh...th-that's-..."

 _Ahagon Umiko, the sparkling conversationalist,_ the little demon inside Umiko's head jeered. But to her credit, it was a little hard for Umiko to focus while trying to not try to look at Rin. She squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head to hide her face. "Th-thank you," she offered.

“And that dress! Just gorgeous,” Rin clapped and giggled. She didn't seem to notice Umiko's bumbling. Or if she did, she didn't seem to mind. She moved slowly, casually around Umiko’s table. "I never would have expected to run into you in a place like this," she commented.

Then, she caught herself, and raised one hand apologetically, "N-not to say that you're not fancy enough for a place like this, or anything!" She giggled nervously, "It's just a bit... surprising, is all."

After a second's pause, she added, "In a good way!"

Umiko hardly heard a thing she said. Umiko's eyes were continually drawn to the swell of Rin's chest under her iridescent dress, the elegant collar around her fair neck, her painted lips, her eyes glittering in the candlelight--

"Y-yeah," she swallowed hard. She tried to look back to her menu, flipping disinterestedly through its laminated pages. "R-right..."

Rin swallowed her own embarrassment and glanced to the empty chair opposite Umiko. She rested her hand gently against it and asked "Are you here waiting for someone?"

Umiko froze. She opened her mouth but could summon no words. Rin was just a coworker (and one of the lesser-threatening ones at that), what was the harm? They'd been out drinking before, after crunch-days past.

Well, Umiko had gone out with Rin and Ko, or Rin and Hazuki before. Never just... Rin. And never while wearing a scant backless dress.

God, her arms were so cold.

Rin was waiting. Umiko still didn’t have a reply loaded. She hadn’t even decided if she herself was going to stay and eat, and now here was the societal obligation of making conversation with a coworker. Not to mention the added pressure of their rather florid environment and attire. Not to mention Rin’s fat baps hangin’ all out on a Thursday afternoon. Too many things were requesting processing power from the CPU in her brain.

Internally, Umiko was screaming. Externally, she lifted one hand and gestured to the seat. "Go right ahead," she said, smiling politely. "Please, sit."


	3. an unexpected date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umiko and Rin bond over a bottle of shitty chardonnay.

Everything in Umiko’s brain recoiled. ‘ _Why would you say that??’_ shouted all the voices in her head in unison. But it was too late: Rin gave a little sigh of relief, nodded, and took the empty chair opposite Umiko. 

“Ah, thank you,” she giggled, “It’s good to sit down. It’s been quite the night.”

“You’re not kiddin’…” Umiko auto-replied. She leaned forward, touching her hand to her forehead, trying to cool the servos in her brain. At least she had committed to a course of action, but was this better or worse than to suffer through the stress of saying ‘No’?

Regretfully, things continued to happen. “Aah, this wine looks good! Do you mind if I pour a bottle?” Rin asked, having already popped the second bottle of Umiko’s wine. Before waiting for an answer, she began to pour a tall glass for herself. Much taller than the glasses that Umiko had been casually sipping. 

_Oh no,_ Umiko thought, _my shitty chardonnay! She’s gonna hate it for sure._ Umiko’s mind could already imagine half a million ways in which Rin could react terribly to the taste. She lifted a hand to object. “T-toyama-san-,”

But before she could object, Rin had already tilted the glass far back, taking a deep, deep gulp, almost chugging it. She drank beyond the point at which she would have reacted, had she hated the taste. A drip of wine slipped past the corners of her lips and onto her cheek. Seemed like she intended to drain the glass in one breath.

And so she did. Rin triumphantly slapped her empty wine glass against the table and let out a gasp of relief. Umiko leant back, eyes widening in equal parts surprise and awe. She never took Rin for a shotgun drinker. In fact she _seemed_ to recall Rin being quite the lightweight.

Nevertheless, Rin’s forearm rose to her lips and she wiped her mouth, smudging a bit of her lipstick. “S-so good…” she giggled, her eyes shining as the alcohol hit her bloodstream. “You have such a mature taste in wine, Umiko-san.”

Umiko’s eyes shone too, but for a different reason. Her cheeks flushed. Her heart was filled with the oddest mixture of appreciation and pride. _Toyama-san complimented my shoddy taste in wine…_ she thought. _I will now die for her._

Then she shook her head, shedding such odd thoughts. Maybe Umiko had had too much to drink herself. “Y-yes, well…”

“How did you find out about this place, Umiko-san?” Rin suddenly asked, wearing a little polite smile as she poured herself a second glass. There seemed to be a little more sway in her movements all of a sudden.

“U-uh!” Umiko couldn’t help but yelping under her breath. She bit her tongue and felt her arms tighten, physically restraining herself from saying something stupid. _Caught me off guard… what could I possibly say?_

She cleared her throat. “Yes, that’s-, well…” Umiko said, lowering her eyes and thoughtfully swirling her wineglass with one hand. _Come on, what did Hazuki say about this damned place…?_

“I simply… saw it on the street one day,” Umiko borrowed a lie from Hazuki, “and I knew the host was a connoisseur of the _finer_ things.”

Rin giggled. “So cultured!” she swooned.

Umiko, glowing, sighed internally. _Thank God for Hazuki, I suppose…_ she found herself thinking. _Her ramblings proved useful, by some miracle._

Rin swirled her drink around too, admiring the shimmering, iridescent patterns which danced across the wine’s surface. “I wish I could say something so grand too,” she mused. Sharing absentmindedly, she said “Hazuki-san and I were out to brunch in this neighborhood one day last week.”

“That so?” Umiko replied, wondering if it was a good idea to let Rin drink even more wine. _She can’t handle so much alcohol, right…?_

“We thought about going in, but Hazuki-san decided we were horridly underdressed for the occasion,” Rin paused to sip her wine, and then she giggled, “Compared to what I’m wearing now, I would have to agree!”

“Mhm,” Umiko sipped her wine, mirroring Rin, and yet again her eyes were drawn to the elegant, form-fitting maroon dress Rin wore. She had these long, lacy gloves (opera gloves?) which stretched from behind her elbow up to the tip of her thin, pretty fingers.

However, now that Umiko inspected her a little more closely, Rin was looking a bit ragged. A few of her hairs were out of place, as if rustled by wind or activity. Her collar was pulled loose, and her gloves were starting to slip. She _did_ look like she’d had ‘quite a night’.

Rin brought her hand to her lips, bringing Umiko’s attention with it, and she giggled again. “Actually, i think her words were: _‘This is a place for lovers to kindle their romance!’_ ”

Umiko narrowed her eyes, all at once reminded of how she’d gotten here: Hazuki had stood her up. _She’s a woman in danger, if this is how she treats her lovers…_

She lifted her wineglass in a whiteknuckle hold and clicked her teeth in annoyance, saying, “I pity the woman who has to accommodate that silver devil’s notion of ‘romance’.”

Rin let out a sharp, surprised laugh that was just a bit too loud before closing her mouth with her fingers. A few heads from tables far away in the dark body of the restaurant turned towards the outburst.

But Rin took no notice. “So biting…!” she remarked. “Umiko-san, aren’t you worried about calling your boss such a name?” 

“Not at all,” Umiko said, waving her hand airily over her shoulder, sipping her own wine again. “She’d take the title like a badge of honor, for sure, if she were here.”

The two of them continued in this way, making small talk - first about the eccentricities of their boss, then about work in general. Umiko leaned forward over the table, resting her chin against the backs of her interlaced hands as she explained the latest woes of the programming department.

Rin patiently and politely listened, wearing her same gentle, maternal smile all the while. She swayed from side to side as her glass of wine grew shallower and shallower. She then shared stories of her recent-most struggles in design and directing. Umiko made a few more facetious comments about the aptitude of her departments’ leaders, and Rin continued to delight in Umiko’s bite, giggling drunkenly along.

And somewhere along the way, the little jeering demons in Umiko’s head settled down. Here she was, drinking with a coworker, making small-talk - and she was surviving! She knew what to say, when to say, and Rin followed her social script too. Even tipsy, Rin was perfectly sociable. Umiko admired her ability to carry a conversation so easily. _No wonder Hazuki makes Rin talk to all the producers for her…_ Umiko pondered.

Rin finished her second drink of wine and gently set the empty glass upon the table, letting out a cute, satisfied sigh after she swallowed. “Aah~...!” She rested her face against her hand and regarded Umiko with a smile.

“It’s nice to see you come out of your shell like this, Umiko-san,” She remarked. “I know we work together every day, but sometimes I feel like I hardly know you at all.”

Umiko swallowed some wine and blushed. “W-well, that’s…” she said.

_So much for knowing what to say…_

“Ah, forgive my ramblings,” Rin waved her pretty, gloved hand before her face and touched her forehead, as if pushing her head up straight. “P-perhaps I drank those two glasses a little too fast!” she joked.

Umiko opened her mouth to excuse-

“Ah, your date finally arrived!” interrupted the waitress with the big, round glasses. She appeared next to the table, carrying a tray of some tasty-looking appetizer. “I guess I don’t need to give you this to cheer you up anymore, but… well, it’s still on the house,” she explained, setting the appetizer down in front of a bewildered Umiko.

Umiko was caught completely off guard. Two streams of language got caught in her brain, and so her voice dwindled to a low squeak in her throat. Rin, her saving grace, giggled and dipped her head to the waitress. “Thank you!” she said, seemingly not noticing that she’d just been called ‘Umiko’s date’.

The waitress smiled and began collecting the empty wine glasses which decorated the table. “You better get your watch fixed and be punctual next time!” she joked, wagging a finger at Rin. “How could you keep such a pretty girl waiting for so long?”

In all fairness, Rin _did_ look a little bit frazzled, and a little bit like she was chugging glass after glass of cheap wine - that is to say: she looked like a deadbeat girlfriend.

But the sudden accusation caught even Rin off guard, and her face flushed a cute pink as she lifted one hand in self defense. “O-oh no, you see, I-”

“Actually, she’s right on time,” Umiko interrupted, capturing the attention of both Rin and the waitress.

Umiko didn’t know what had prompted her to say this, nor did she know where the words came from in her brain; but something inside her had resolved viscerally to protect Rin from the chiding of this stranger. Perhaps Umiko was succumbing to that universal urge to come to the aid of a pretty girl. Nevertheless, the antivirus software in Umiko’s brain had detected an opportunity to defend her coworker’s honor, and had executed ‘say_things.exe’.

And so, Umiko gave the waitress a polite, knowing smile as she coyly bonked her own balled fist against her head, nonverbally signifying folly on her own part. “It was a misunderstanding on my part. I’d come a half-hour too early.”

Rin watched Umiko in a kind of stunned silence, shocked to see Umiko fabricate a mistake on her own part; protecting Rin’s honor against the chastisement of this total stranger.

“A-ah!” said the waitress, now shamed herself of jumping to conclusions. She lowered her tray and folded both her hands together, bowing to Rin honorably, saying “My sincerest apologies, ma’am, um… p-please accept this complimentary appetizer!”

Rin and Umiko glanced down at the dish that had been placed before them. It was a small, elegant tray of prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella, crostini and ripened tomatoes. 

“It looks delicious,” Rin gushed, laughing to herself to dispel her own nervous energy. “Th-thank you so much!”

The waitress smiled and bowed again to the both of them. “I’ll let you have one more look at the menu before you order, f-for your date’s sake,” she said to Umiko, gesturing to Rin. Umiko nodded to her gratefully.

And, just as quickly as she’d reappeared, the waitress vanished into the dim depths of the busy steakhouse. Umiko handed Rin her copy of the menu, so that she could look over it. 

Rin accepted the menu and peered over its pages one at a time. But she kept distractedly glancing up from the menu to Umiko, who was pouring herself yet another accursed glass of her horrid chardonnay.

“You didn’t have to do that…” Rin murmured, her voice filled with a gentle, gracious spirit.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Umiko shrugged, taking a sip of her wine and trying not to shudder in revulsion from the taste. “I’ve had plenty of time to look at the menu myself, and plus she’ll surely come back with a second menu, once she realizes we only have one between us-”

“N-no,” Rin interrupted with an amused smile, “I mean, l-lying like that to the waitress… just for my sake.”

“Oh,” Umiko swallowed thoughtfully. She herself only barely understood her own urge to protect Rin. Was it because Rin had so appreciated this terrible wine, so near and dear to Umiko’s own heart?

“Well, of course. You did nothing wrong, right?” she tilted her head and tossed her hand about in consideration. “You shouldn’t have to take unnecessary, undeserved chastising.”

Rin smiled. “M-maybe so… Still, um… I’m very grateful.”

She read the menu in silence after that. And not a minute later, just as Umiko predicted, the waitress came running back to deposit a second menu on the table and run off again. Umiko picked it up, voicing her gratitude to the back of the quickly escaping waitress, and returned to perusing the steaks. She still needed to decide on the cheapest entree that would be worth ordering.

Rin continued to distractedly glance up at Umiko from her menu. “...So you were waiting here for someone else?”

Umiko pulled her mouth into a tight, annoyed line as she was reminded of Hazuki’s antics yet again. “Mhm,” was all she said, narrowing her eyes to read the thin lines of italian text in her menu. She didn’t offer anymore, mostly because she didn’t feel like it was really worth divulging.

Rin, thankfully, accepted her silence and nodded. “I’m sorry you were stood up,” she offered in a kind voice. Umiko nodded and managed to give Rin a little gracious smile. 

“I suppose I can relate,” Rin continued. “Truth be told, I’ve been here for an hour already… waiting for Ko-chan to show up.”

Umiko looked up from her menu in surprise. “Oh,” was all she could think to say.

“We had plans for dinner tonight at seven-thirty,” Rin explained. “I let her know last week, and reminded her again on Tuesday…”

Her menu was slowly lowering down to the table, as Rin’s eyes focused further and further away from her own hands. She looked upset, like she might even start to cry.

Umiko didn’t know what to do. She’d never been good at comforting people. While Rin was focused on the despair in her own mind, Umiko silently took the bottle of wine from the table and set it on the floor next to her chair. _Perhaps she’s had enough…_ Umiko thought. if Rin was a cry-drunk, Umiko wanted to avoid an episode.

But, all of a sudden, Rin brightened up, wiping at her eyes and forcing a big smile and a laugh. “Ah well, wh-who needs her!! I’m having a great time without her,” she insisted. She reached for where the wine had just been, but her fingertips found empty air.

Umiko sipped her wine with a poker face. Rin blinked and glanced around for a moment confusedly, before shrugging and reaching down to sample the appetizer.

=====

Rin awoke with a start as the sound of her alarm clock shook her drunken-dream-world apart. Her heart and head were pounding and she groaned in pain, burrowing deeper into her pillows to escape the shrill, incessant beeping of the clock.

After blindly fighting with the buttons atop her clock for a minute, she finally shut off the horrid noise, and her wildly beating heart could rest. Her head, though, continued to pound, as if some invisible demon was playing her brain like a bongo.

Grumbling loudly, she pulled herself into a seating position and scratched at her head, and all over her body. She was loosely covered in ill-sitting lace and an elegant, shimmering, maroon backless dress. Her face was covered and smeared with makeup from the night before.

 _W-what happened last night…?_ She thought, unable to place herself in time for a scary moment. Then, memories began to drip back slowly, one at a time.

 _I was at dinner with Umiko-san… why? I never meet her for dinner… no,_ Rin thought to herself as she struggled to stand to her feet. She found her sexy black heels still wrapped uncomfortably around her feet. _No, I hadn’t intended to meet with Umiko, but I found her there, because…_

Successfully pulling herself to her feet, Rin haphazardly tossed her shoes in the general direction of the closet and stumbled towards the bathroom. _No, I had dinner with Ko-chan last night!_ She successfully remembered. Thursday night was the night she’d chosen, because her Friday night (tonight…?) would be too busy.

 _But then…_ Rin paused in the doorway to the bathroom, leaning her head against the door jam for support. _...then Ko never came…_

Rin squeezed her eyes shut and balled her fists. Her head hurt so bad. She wanted to go back to sleep. She wanted to take a shower, and then go back to sleep. She didn’t want to go into work. More than anything, she _definitely_ did _NOT_ want to go into work and see Ko today.

 _Ah, beans,_ she swore. _Love is the pits._


	4. an argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin and Ko have an argument. Hazuki swears to help Ko out.

Rin peered around the corner of her cubicle with all the stealth of Solid Snake. "Hnngh, colonel," she whispered to herself in a low, gravelly voice, referencing her number one favorite meme of all time. "I'm trying to avoid running into Ko-chan this morning…"

Sure enough, Ko was missing from her desk. She hadn't slept here at Eagle Jump last night - hadn’t stayed late at all, in fact. She’d been uncharacteristically eager to get out early. Rin had assumed it was because Ko was getting ready for their dinner.

In fact, Rin had been happy to handle one of Ko's last responsibilities of the day for her _so that_ Ko could leave as early as she did, a big smile on her face all the while.

"Thanks a bundle, Rin-chan!" Ko had called on the way out the door.

"See you soon!" Rin had replied, trying to put the feeling of a heart emoji into her voice.

Well. Look how that turned out.

Rin wanted to avoid Ko this morning if she could. She didn't want to face her, to confront being stood up. If Ko had truly stood her up, then obviously Rin wanted to know why. If Ko had an excuse, then Rin wanted to hear it.

But she was also terrified of the truth, because what if the truth was ‘Sorry, Rin, but I decided all of a sudden in the middle of the evening that I hate you and I never want to see you again’?

So, to see that Ko was missing from her desk this morning was simultaneously relieving and disappointing.

She sighed, and finished her meme. "…But I'm dummy thick," she murmured softly to herself, giving her tushie a shake. "And the clap of my-,"

Rin was interrupted when an unknown perturbance poked the soft, squishy bit of her body between her ribs and her hips. She yelped and leapt backwards in fright, turning to find the source of the intrusion: Yagami Ko was crouching behind her, giggling to herself, pointer finger outstretched.

"Hiding from me?" she joked, flashing Rin a perfect smile. The same shit-eating grin she always wore when she teased Rin. The one that made her look like the cutest asshole on the planet. "Trying to give me a scare?"

Rin frowned. Her heart was a stew of emotions. how could she stay mad at Ko while staring directly at her cute face? She bit the inside of her cheek and pouted; it was all she could think to do.

Ko laughed, stretching her arms up over her head, exposing her midriff. She circled Rin in a kind of victory lap. "Sorry, Rin, you'll have to get up earlier than that to prank me!" she advised with a wink. Rin pouted some more.

 _Darn it, why does she have to be so cute…_ Rin bemoaned internally. Then, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. _Wh-what am I thinking??_

Ko noticed nothing of the emotional war waging inside of Rin. She breezed past Rin and swung into their shared cubicle. It was the one right next to the character-team cubicle, where none of the other girls had yet gathered. 

That wasn’t surprising, though, for this early in the morning. Rin and Ko were usually the first to arrive in general. Ko spun her spinny chair around and plopped her body lackadaisically into it, legs kicked out over one of the armrests, feet knocking over the pens and papers randomly strewn about her desk.

Rin narrowed her eyes, her former anger returning and refilling her heart, now that Ko's face was pointed away from her. _Don't you have anything to say to me??_ she thought loudly, trying to telepathically chew Ko out. This had no effect.

Rin huffed, extended her back very straight, and stepped into the cubicle with her nose turned to the ceiling, walking very properly and formally. "Good morning, Ko," she said, trying to put just a bit of uppity-ness in her voice, and purposefully leaving off her usual ‘-chan’ honorific. She didn’t want to sound uppity enough that Ko would think she was angry, but just enough that Ko would notice, and _wonder_ if Rin was angry. 

Rin _was_ angry, of course, but she wanted Ko to agonize a bit over the wondering of the possibility.

In fact, Ko noticed none of this nuance. "Mm," she grunted in reply, her attention already enveloping the stack of tasks on her schedule for the day. Her brain was beginning to fill with artwork, meetings, schedules, and management.

Rin settled at her own desk, neatly placing her bag off to the side, and withdrawing a folder from a clean filing cabinet drawer, to organize the day's work. _Oh no, my window is closing!_ she sensed. Was she going to confront Ko? Had Ko noticed her anger? Did she care?? It would drive her insane if she had to go the full workday without knowing. _I've only got one shot!!_

Rin glanced over her shoulder. Ko was sitting with her legs pulled up into her chair, spinning her hips back and forth while she worked. Rin cleared her throat. When Ko didn't notice, she spoke up anyway. "I hope you had… a _fun night_ last night, Ko." Would she notice that Rin wasn't including the '-chan'?

Nope. Ko turned gleefully around and slapped her hands against her knees. "Hell yeah I did! A friend of mine in programming got me a demo for PECO, and I spent the whole night playtesting."

Ko went on to describe how much fun she thought the game was, and how encouraging it was for her to see its progress, but Rin heard none of it. Ko's words had pierced her heart like an untipped fencing foil. _K-Ko-chan... you forgot me for work…?_ she wondered. She slowly spun her chair around, turning blank eyes towards Ko.

Ko was still talking about the game. "-And there's this one mechanic where, if you capture a royal guard inside the castle, you can go into the restricted areas without the other guards impeding you!" she said, among other asinine observations. 

“Hey, thanks for handling that last writeup for me last night. I just barely caught the quickest train back to my place!” Ko added, wiping her forehead in mock relief. Her eyes were glittering as she spoke, continuing to praise PECO.

Rin was dying. It felt like her whole world was falling out from under her. She'd always known that nothing else mattered to Ko when she was focused on work, not even eating and sleeping. Everything fell off her mind's radar when she was enthused about a project. Rin knew this, and yet...

It still hurt to think that Ko would forget about her, too.

Ko looked so happy, though; did Rin have any right to be upset with her? Would she say anything about dinner, after all? How would she cope with the fact that she _wouldn't_ say anything about dinner, after all?

Rin didn't know. She didn't want to know. She didn't want to be here, she didn't want to be looking at Ko. She wanted to hide, or cry, or both. More than anything, she wanted to go to bed and sleep for a dozen-dozen years.

Ko sighed, her spiel finally reaching its end. She settled happily back into her seat and smiled at Rin. "It just feels good to see all your passions finally become something _real_ , you know?"

Rin didn't. She nodded anyway.

Ko, satisfied, nodded and spun back around in her spinny chair, returning to her computer with a renewed fervor for her work. Her attention was absorbed by her screen, her pen, and her smartphone's calendar app.

Rin's window had shut. She turned soberly back to her own computer, and she tried to think about work. She tried to think abbout that cute video she saw the other day. About anything other than that dumb, forgetful blonde that consumed her every thought.

She lowered her head and hid her eyes. _I'll be fine…_ she promised herself. _I’ll be fine._

_It’s not like this is anything new._

Rin gave up. Several minutes passed in silence. And then from Ko's stomach came a gentle, mournful gurgling, like that of a beached whale. Ko clutched her belly. She'd skipped breakfast (too eager to get to Eagle Jump so that she could keep working on her project). She winced, and whined, "Ah… hungry."

Rin ignored her.

Ko glanced her way. This was usually the time when Rin would reach into her purse and produce a granola bar for Ko to snack on. She usually had a couple, at least. She knew how forgetful Ko was about food and such when she was enthused for work, after all.

Not that Ko was consciously aware of any of this, it was just something Rin anticipated in advance, and then accidentally operantly-conditioned Ko into expecting. Pavlov's Nature Valley bar.

Rin did, in fact, have two granola bars in her purse. She did not offer them to Ko, though. She did not even notice Ko had said anything. Her mind was elsewhere, somewhere in that clouded, depressing environment where all emo poetry is written.

Ko was momentarily befuddled - had she expected Rin to do something there? And if so, why hadn't Rin done that thing? She shook her head and turned back to her computer.

Then, she blinked. "Oh, that reminds me."

Ko swung around in her chair and threw her arm over the back, kicking her leg through the loop of her armrest. That could not have been comfortable sitting at all, but Ko didn’t seem to mind tying her body like a pretzel around her chair.

She flashed Rin’s back with a big smile. "Hey, I can't wait for dinner tonight."

Rin's shoulders stiffened as her ears caught the phrase. Her whole body snapped to attention.

Ko gently swayed this way and that, rocking her spinny chair back and forth with her heels. She bounced her eyebrows and asked in a low, teasing voice, "Are you gonna wear that backless dress I like?"

Rin felt like the world was crumbling around her feet, but this time for a different reason. She didn't dare turn around. She didn't think she would be able to handle it. "…What?" was all she could think to say.

"Dinner!" Ko repeated enthusiastically. "You and me! At that italian place on the east side you were telling me about. To die for, you said."

Ko stroked her chin and squinted at the ceiling, struggling to remember more details. " _Tesori_ … something. _Tesori d’Autore_? Ah," she shrugged and laughed at herself, "I have the GPS, so I’ll find it either way. Tonight at seven-thirty, right?"

She spun all the way around - once, twice, three times - just for fun. When Rin didn’t reply, Ko laughed, "Ah, did Rin forget? Wouldn't that be a first - _you_ forgetting and _me_ remembering? When has that ever happened?"

She stopped her spinning with a quick stomp and found Rin turned around, looking intently at her. Rin wore an indescribable emotion on her face, and she had tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

Ko blinked. "…Rin?"

Rin swiped at her eyes and turned away, returning to an email on her computer. She cleared her throat and struggled to speak cleanly. "I c-can't go to dinner tonight, Ko," she said in a voice so soft she might as well have been whispering.

"I have a very important m-meeting scheduled with PECO producers after work."

Ko was blown away. She leaned backwards so far she almost fell out of her chair. " _Wha-a-a?_ How long have you known about this?"

"A few weeks," Rin mumbled.

Ko stood up incredulously, nearly knocking her chair over at the same time. The loop of the armrest was still caught around her leg. "And you scheduled a dinner for the same night?!"

"N-no," Rin sniffed. She tried to type an e-mail but her vision was too blurred by tears to see the keys. "I _didn't_ schedule them for the same night."

Ko blinked. "…?" she said.

"Dinner was _last night_ , Ko-chan," Rin whispered, bowing her head in shame. "You never came…"

Ko's eyes widened to the size of plates. What? She opened her mouth to rebut - and then lunged for her smartphone. She checked the calendar app. ' _Dinner w/ Rin! <3 _ ' was gleefully reported in tonight’s ' _Important Events_ ' section.

"But…?" Ko swallowed. She felt the back of her neck growing hot. Could it be…? Fingers flying faster than franks at a hotdog eating contest, she opened her messaging app and scrolled through three days of texts from Rin to find the damning exchange; a short message sent Tuesday night.

Rin (10:57 p.m.): dont forget our dinner thursday!! Shizuku-san and I found an italian place on the east side that's to die for <3

Ko (12:03 a.m.): [wine bottle emoji] [wine glass emoji] [turkey leg emoji]

Ko (12:03 a.m.): wear that backless dress i like~

Rin (7:05 a.m.): Ko-chan… [eye rolling emoji]

Rin (7:07 a.m.): [heart emoji]

The trepidation under Ko's collar reached a boil. She'd not forgotten, just misread. Her hand trembled. She hyperventilated. She needed to release this nervous energy somehow!

Ko dropped her phone and slammed her hands against her desk, turning and shouting to Rin incredulously, "Who makes dinner plans for a Thursday night??"

"That's not the point!!" Rin shouted back, leaping from her chair to confront Ko with all the whirling emotions in her heart. "I _told_ you when dinner was, I reminded you again days later!"

It was a good thing that the rest of the character design team wasn’t here yet; neither Rin nor Ko would’ve wanted their little exchange to be seen by anyone else. They went back and forth for a short, hot minute, jabbering about scheduling, clarity, and Ko’s potential dyslexia.

“L-look, I’m sorry, okay?!” Ko shouted, hands raised to her shoulders defensively. Bickering was nothing unheard of for Rin and Ko, but this misunderstanding felt somehow different. She had a cold, uncomfortable knot in her stomach; Rin looked really, seriously hurt.

And maybe it was the hangover, maybe it was that Rin hadn’t gotten enough sleep, maybe it was a million and one things, but she _was_ hurt. “How could you f-forget about me so easily…” she begged, holding her hands to her chest. “I do all these things for us - I p-plan dinners, a-and you forget so easily! I feel like you see right through me sometimes, Ko-chan!” It was everything Rin could do to keep her tears from flowing freely.

Ko couldn’t handle the pressure. She didn’t know what to do, what to say that might make Rin feel better, might diffuse this whole thing. She squeezed her eyes shut and stamped her foot. “I-it’s just dinner, anyway!” she finally shouted, throwing her arms apart incredulously. “ _Why do you care so much?!_ ”

Rin opened her mouth to retort, but nothing came. Ko’s words suddenly stabbed through her heart as she processed them. Her voice came out as a quiet little trickle, barely a whisper. Two long, thick teardrops spilled down her cheeks, as she looked into Ko’s eyes like a rabbit caught in headlights.

Ko blinked and caught her breath, realizing she may have gone too far. “R-Rin-chan…” was all she could think to say.

Rin tried to open her mouth again, but her words were choked by up-and-coming sobs. Instead, her hands flew to her face, she squeaked, sniffed, and ran past Ko, quickly rushing out of the cubicle and down the hall. 

"R-Rin!!" Ko reached unsteadily towards her as she raced past. "Rin, I didn't mean to-!"

But it was too late. Rin intended to put as much distance between herself and Ko as possible, in the shortest amount of time. She rounded a corner and disappeared into a maze of corridors, blindly racing towards somewhere safe to cry, to hide, to try and get all of these terrible feelings out of her heart.

Ko, with her legs still stuck through the armrest of her spinny chair, couldn't get herself untangled in time. Freeing herself and dashing to the end of the hall, she found that Rin was already long gone.

Ko threw her hands defeatedly into the air, torn between her passions. Give chase and try to figure out where Rin went, or give up and return to her work? The work needed to get done, and the longer she waited the more urgent it grew. But she'd accidentally hurt Rin, accidentally said those words so harshly…

All Ko could do was walk back and forth in awkward little circles, huffing and periodically throwing her hands to the air, to her forehead, to God and anyone listening.

Hazuki was listening. " _Ha-arsh_ ," she crooned. She was leaning over a cubicle wall, face resting in her hand, elbow resting in her other hand. She'd only heard the tail end of Rin and Ko’s spat, but none of it sounded good.

Hazuki's sudden appearance spooked Ko, something fierce. She nearly leapt into the ceiling. Her anxieties were charging her like a battery. When she realized it was only Hazuki, she groaned loudly. She faced away from Hazuki, crossed her arms and pounded her foot nervously against the floor.

"Piss off," she grumbled.

"Tut, tut," Hazuki chided with a wagging finger. "Is that any way to speak to your boss?"

Ko tightened her arms around her chest and pouted. It was _not_ , in fact, any way to speak to one's boss. She was lucky Hazuki was cool with being cursed at from time to time. But still, Ko had no patience for any of Hazuki's teases right now.

Hazuki continued anyway. "I've seen plenty of lover's quarrels in my day, but this is in a league of its own." She whistled to punctuate herself. "Can't say that I can relate, though. I would _never_ do something so outrageously disrespectful as forget a dinner date."

"I didn't forget!!" Ko rebutted, huffing, "I just… got the date wrong.”

Hazuki gave her a knowing glare, crossing her arms and resting her chin against them like a cheeky peeping tom.

Ko rolled her eyes. "Look, don't you have anything _constructive_ to say??"

"As a matter of fact--!" Hazuki hummed gleefully. Quicker than a flash, she stepped out into the hall and approached Ko from behind, like a coach approaching their heaviest hitter. She even stroked Ko's shoulders like a ringside manager at a boxing arena. "I read a doujin just last night about precisely this situation."

"Don't ever tell me you read doujin again-"

"Well," Hazuki spoke over Ko, waving her hand airily, "The details were a little different, but the 'missing the dinner date' portion was the story's main conflict. I can guide you through all the things you'll need to do to win Rin back, and make up for this grievous err on your own part."

 _That_ got Ko's attention. She sighed, and resigned herself to Hazuki's shoulder rubbing. "Alright, granny, I'm listening."

Hazuki giggled and purposefully ignored the granny comment, for Ko's own sake. There was too much drama at stake here, and Hazuki intended to milk this angst-cow for all it was worth. Her giggles slowly devolved into devious, devilish cackles.

Ko took no notice, losing herself in Hazuki's shoulder-rubbing. _That feels so nice..._ she thought. Then another thought occurred to her, and she suddenly straightened her back, crossed her arms and pouted yet again.

"Also me and Rin aren't lovers," she declared. Hazuki laughed out loud.


	5. a family bathroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin runs away from her feelings. Umiko helps her clean herself up.

Rin dashed through the halls of Eagle Jump, feeling overwhelmed and trying her damndest to find somewhere to cry it out.  _ A bathroom? No, she'd find me… An office? Whose office would I go to like this? Why don't I have my own office yet…? _

Rin didn't know. Rin didn't care. All she wanted to do was get away from Ko, away from this building, away from all her feelings - and all as quickly as possible. She could hardly see through the tears continually welling up in her eyes. She kept wiping at her eyes and nose, trying to hide her face as much as possible.  _ Oh God, my makeup is probably running…  _ she thought, dismayed.

_ I hope I don't run into anybody I know, _ Rin thought to herself as she rounded a corner too fast and plowed directly into the body of a person she knew.

"Ahh!" Rin yelped as she bounced off the other person like a slinky going down the stairs. She landed weird on her heel and lost her balance and suddenly found herself falling backward-

But then the other person caught her. Strong, steady arms came wrapping gently around Rin’s body, holding her steady and keeping her up. The stranger pulled her close, accidentally pressing Rin's face into a soft, warm chest. Rin felt her hands fall against the body of her savior. 

Whoever it was, she smelled of sweet coffee and had a rockin’ set of cans.

Rin blinked and squinted blearily through tears and eyeliner and fluorescent lighting, turning her head upward to see the face of a tall, surprised woman who'd caught her when she'd fallen.

"T-Toyama-san," Umiko said in surprise. She hadn’t expected the collision, but instinctually reached out to catch Rin as she fell backwards. She now held Rin close to her body in an awkward, wholly-enveloping kind of bear hug, in the middle of a dimly lit hallway far away from anybody and everybody else.

Umiko’s second instinct was, of course, to let go and let Rin stand on her own, but Rin looked like she could use a little support right now. Her face was all red, makeup streaking and now staining the front of Umiko's shirt, eyes wet and puffy. Rin was, in a word, a wreck.

Looking upon her, all Umiko could think was,  _ I never noticed how pretty Toyama-san's eyes are before… _

"U-Umiko-san…!" Rin choked in surprise. She pressed her hands into Umiko's body and pushed away. For a moment Umiko resisted, then realized Rin could stand on her own and quickly let go.

Umiko dipped her head and bent over to pick up some things she’d dropped in the collision, and Rin looked away to futilely try and make her face presentable. They each hoped the other would not notice their own rapidly reddening faces.

Umiko organized her things on the floor and stood up. "I'm sorry, I-," Rin began.

"I was just-," Umiko began at the same time. They both stopped to let the other talk. "You first," Umiko nodded.

Rin wheezed (the only feeble facsimile of laughter which she could muster in her current disastrous state), and apologized again. "I-I'm so sorry, I should have been looking out for where I was going, I-I-..." she sniffed, wiping her eyes again, trying to hide her face.

She felt like a spotlight had been put on her. Rin didn't think Umiko was the judgy type, but still. She hadn't wanted  _ anyone _ to see her in this state, let alone the stoic, serious, elegant Umiko - the same Umiko who defended her honor to a complete stranger just last night, making up that lie to the waitress who’d been chiding her. Rin blushed again, memories of the night before flooding back.

_ How gorgeous she looked in that candlelight…  _ Rin thought. Compared to how calm and composed Umiko always carried herself, Rin must have looked so foolishly emotional right now. She felt hot under the collar.

Umiko, meanwhile, had no idea what was going on in Rin's world. She couldn't even begin to guess what events had transpired in the last fourteen hours that had brought Rin here, to this dimly lit hallway by the programming bay, looking the way she did.

But, if there was one thing Umiko  _ did _ know, it was how to take care of a woman in need.

She smiled and extended her hand. It hung gently in the air near Rin's own hand. "Come with me," she offered.

Rin blinked, looking from Umiko's outstretched hand up to her soft, sparkling blue eyes. Her head was haloed by the bright LED lamps of the programming bay, down the hall behind her. The sight was overwhelmingly relaxing; Umiko looked like a guardian angel. Without even thinking, Rin lifted her hand and placed it in Umiko's.

Umiko nodded and turned around. She led Rin down the hall and around another secret corner, down an even dimmer hallway. Rin didn't think she'd ever been in this corner of the building before. Then she realized she’d not been paying attention to anywhere she'd been going in her whole despairing flee. She was completely lost, completely at the mercy of Umiko's guidance.

Umiko, on the other hand, pressed on boldly. She knew these halls like the back of her hand. She often walked them after closing to scare away any lingering interns and play-testers. She stepped at a brisk clip, keeping Rin in the shadows so that she wouldn't be seen by any other employees in the area.

But luckily they ran into no one else. Umiko was taking Rin to her most closely guarded secret: a single family bathroom, located in the middle of an abandoned hallway between the female and male sides of Eagle Jump. Umiko could always,  _ always _ count on this room being completely unoccupied, and privacy was something she revered above all else.

Umiko had never shared this hidden gem with anyone before, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Umiko could see that Rin was in need of a little privacy of her own.

They arrived at the sacred bathroom - unoccupied, as promised. Umiko gently released Rin's hand and removed a ring of jingling keys from her pocket. Rin could still feel the lingering warmth of Umiko’s touch in her palm, and she closed her other hand around it to insulate it. Preserve it.

Umiko unlocked the bathroom door and pulled it wide open, gesturing to Rin. "Get yourself cleaned up," she instructed, "No one ever comes over here."

Rin peered into the sanctuarial family bathroom. It was clean, quiet, and wonderfully empty. It even had a decorative plant in the corner. She looked back to Umiko and smiled, her eyes welling up again in appreciation. "Umiko-san-," she tried to say.

Umiko shooed her inside. "I'm sorry, I'd offer you more makeup if I had any," she apologized.

Rin managed to laugh at that. She wiped her eyes and lifted her purse, and said, "No worries, I've always got extra."

Umiko nodded sagaciously and gave her a big thumbs up. It was a bit of a silly sight to see Umiko look so serious while gesturing so grandly. Rin giggled and gently closed the door. Umiko turned on her heel to stand guard. No one ever came this far out anyway, but…  _ just in case,  _ she thought.

Inside, Rin was finally alone in a clean, safe, private space. She could now cry in peace, get it all out of her system and get back to work. Rin suddenly despaired, realizing all the emails she was missing right now.

She stood in place for a few moments, waiting for more tears to come on. She called up visions of Ko, echoed her words, anything to get the sobs a-flowin’.

_ “It’s just dinner, anyway!” _ Ko screamed in Rin’s mind,  _ “Why do you care so much?!” _

Rin strained her face, trying to squeeze more tears out of her eyes.

She was getting a headache. She released the pressure in her head and let out a loud whine.  _ Tears were coming so easily just a second ago!! _ she moaned internally. But it was no use. She just couldn’t focus on being sad.

Her mind kept drifting to Umiko.

This was the second time in fifteen hours Rin had been saved by Umiko, and the thought of that was giving Rin a peculiar, buzzing feeling, right in the center of her stomach. But not in a bad way… Rin was grateful, she was happy, she was… flattered? No… something dearer, something more appreciative.

Rin had never appreciated how pretty Umiko's eyes were, before.

She sighed again.  _ Well, it's no use trying to cry, anymore _ , she thought. It would seem Umiko had stolen the rest of her tears. Rin smiled at that strange thought and busied herself with the next order of business: cleaning herself up.

Outside the bathroom, Umiko was tapping her foot, looking for something to busy herself. She couldn’t hear anything from inside the bathroom, no crying or anything.  _ That’s probably for the best… _ she considered. Then, she realized she’d lost her count of how many ceiling tiles were in this hallway.  _ Damn it. _

_ One, two, three…  _

Rin opened the door. Umiko leapt forward in fright, not expecting it to open so soon. When she turned around to behold Rin, the first thing out of her mouth was “Are you okay?”

And the answer was a clear  _ yes _ : Umiko's breath caught in her throat when she saw how stunning Rin looked. Her head was haloed by the warm incandescent light of the family bathroom behind her. She'd cleaned her face and replaced her eyeliner so well, that her previous cry was virtually invisible. She looked as good and fresh as she did when she'd first left the house that morning.

And when she smiled, it stretched that shiny, maroon lipstick that made her lips look so plump and kissable. Umiko's heart skipped a beat. She bit her tongue to fight off an up-and-coming blush.

"I'm much better, now," Rin nodded graciously. She turned around and quietly closed the door to Umiko's secret family bathroom. Umiko nodded and let out a little sight of relief (also blowing off some nervous energy of her own).

“That’s good to hear.”

Rin turned back to Umiko and bowed deeply to her in appreciation. "Thank you so much, Umiko-san," she said, "You didn't have to do all of this for me."

"It's what anyone would do," Umiko answered directly, "seeing a lovely young woman in peril." She didn't even realize what she'd said until it was out of her mouth, and when she  _ did _ realize what she’d said her face went stone gray.

But Rin found it endearing. She held her hand to her face and giggled cutely. "That sounds a little like something Shizuku-san would say."

Umiko died a little inside, because Rin was right. "Ah, you're right…" she murmured, wondering how deeply Hazuki's corruption ran within herself.

Rin paid this no mind. She straightened out the front of her dress and slung her purse back over her shoulder. She sighed, anticipating the worst part yet. "…Shall we head back?" she asked.

She hesitated partly because she didn't want to go back to Ko, and partly because she didn't know how to get back to the rest of the building from here.

"Yes," Umiko answered immediately, though, straightening her back and brushing off her perfectly pressed shirt anyway. "Yes, um...y-yes," she repeated. She nodded stiffly, turned 90 degrees on her heel, and began walking down the hall. Rin tapped after her at a brisk clip to stay in tow.

As they neared the end of the hall and returned to the point where they'd first run into each other, Rin spotted a few strange objects sitting on the floor in the distance. "Is that…?"

"Ah-," Umiko picked up her already-brisk pace and sped over to the collection of objects. On the floor ahead, there was waiting her bag, her clipboard, and… a wine bottle?

Indeed it was! Umiko crouched and lifted it gingerly with both hands. She looked to Rin with a determined smile and said, "I was actually looking for you, to give you this."

Rin's heart fluttered involuntarily.  _ A gift? And wine, of all things? _ "W-whatever for?" she asked, nearing curiously.

Umiko presented the bottle to Rin. It was a shitty chardonnay. "I remembered you liked the bottle of wine we shared last night," She explained. "This brand is from Okinawa, so it's a bit hard to track down."

She placed the bottle of wine in Rin's arms. "This is one of mine. I wanted you to have it, just in case you wanted more." Umiko smiled endearingly, wearing that same kind of prideful smile she always wore when she told people about her interests.

Rin looked into Umiko's eyes and felt the pressure of a new wave of tears behind her eyes.  _ D-darn it, if you make me cry again…!  _ she thought, but what she said out loud was, "Umiko-san..."

Umiko gave her another big thumbs up. Her heart felt a little bit daring, so before her brain could stop her, Umiko nodded and said, "Let's share it sometime."

Rin looked back down to the bottle and bit her lip. The past hour for her had been such an emotional rollercoaster, and now she felt like crying all over again. She blinked and wiped at her eyes and smiled at Umiko again. "I'd like that."

Umiko snapped out of a daze. Her brain had frozen like a buffering video, and all the little demons in her brain were berating her for having the  _ gall  _ to even  _ suggest _ a second date with Rin, but Rin's answer brought her back to reality. "R-really?" she stammered.

Rin's laugh was a little bit wheezy, a little bit exhausted, but earnest. She leaned her head forward, accidentally touching it against Umiko's chest. She hadn’t realized they’d been standing so close… 

"It was your idea!" Rin gently chided, "Don't back out on it now."

Umiko smiled and chuckled to herself, folding her hands over her clipboard. She felt hot under the collar.

Rin pursed her lips, considering her options. This moment they were sharing was so private, so tender - and last night too, had been so private, so sweet… 

_ It's probably in my rights to…  _ Rin thought as she went in for the kill.

She tiptoed nearer to Umiko, stretched herself up high, and kissed Umiko's cheek. Her lips pulled away from Umiko's face with a soft  _ peck _ .

Rin slipped quickly back down and hid her reddening face behind the chardonnay. Her heart was set atwitter with all the delight of a schoolyard crush. "Thank you again, Umiko-san," she said, bowing deeply to hide her blush, "…for everything."

Umiko, meanwhile, was short-circuiting. "Y-yeah-..." she nodded stiffly. Her eyes were cross-wiring against her feelings, and she was seeing stars. Rin giggled again.

And they finally parted ways. Rin wandered back in the general direction of the art bay, newly equipped with a lovingly-picked bottle of wine and the promise of a second date. Umiko wandered blindly back to the programming bay, not noticing that Rin had left a perfect little pair of maroon lips upon her cheek. Her mind was a million miles away, filled with wine and makeup and backless dresses and pretty, pretty eyes.

Rin held her wine close to her heart. Umiko touched her hand to her cheek. Each with the reverence of a parishioner approaching the temple, they stepped into the bright fluorescent lights of their respective departments and returned to work.

But their minds were strangely far, and their hearts were strangely close.


	6. a lewd doujin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hazuki and Ko discuss their strategy for winning Rin's forgiveness. Christina is enlisted against her will.

Hazuki burst in. “If you need to apologize to your lover but you don’t know what to say, there’s no better place to look than a good old-fashioned romance manga!” she announced, striding boldly through a random office door.

Ko followed sleepily after her. “How many times do I have to tell you? Me and Rin aren’t lovers...” she whined, yawning and rubbing her eyes to adjust to the office brightness. All the excitement and yelling she’d just shared with Rin had really worn her out. Ko could go for a nap.

Hazuki ignored her. The pair dispersed into a wide area in the far east wing of the floor, which served as a kind of open conference room. There were a few tables to either side and there was an old ugly mint filing cabinet in the corner.

Crouching by the base of the beat-up cabinet, Hazuki pulled the bottom drawer all the way out and dropped it heavily against her own body. “Hup!” she grunted, rising unsteadily to her feet. She propped the drawer against her hip, jostling it a couple of times to get a good hold. Ko watched through bleary eyes as Hazuki lugged the drawer over a few wobbly steps, before finally dropping it against a nearby table and spilling its contents.

She spread it out with her hand, and soon the working surface of the table was majority-covered by dozens and dozens of pages of doujin, ranging widely in themeology, lewdity, and color palette. Hazuki dropped the empty drawer by the table and moved slowly to a nearby closet, rubbing her back like a grandma. “Ah, I need to go digital… I’m getting too old to carry all these around.”

Normally Ko would have poked fun at Hazuki’s age, but she was starstruck by the truly vast collection of zines and prints she beheld on the table before her. She fingered through the stacks and pages, equal parts amazed and horrified. “Jesus, how many years have you been stashing this stuff at work?” she bellowed.

Hazuki, zipping quickly to Ko’s side, slapped her hand over Ko’s mouth to silence her (more than a moment too late), “Never you mind that! And don’t be so loud,” she chuckled through a polite, strained voice, playfully slapping Ko’s cheek. Ko flinched and shook her head away from Hazuki’s maternal intrusions, sputtering childishly. 

“Don’t worry about the where or the how,” Hazuki went on, circling Ko. “…or the how much or the how long - stay focused! We are here to look for a solution.”

Spinning Ko around and holding her by the shoulders, Hazuki gestured grandly to her collection and promised, “Among these many stories of romance, drama and femslash - we will find the way in which you should apologize to Toyama-san!”

Ko pushed Hazuki away and picked up one of the zines. The cover depicted two maidens: a tall, purple-haired beauty in a slim, flattering suit; and a smaller, bubbly, pink haired princess just _draped_ in ostentatious lace and pouf. There was more detail in these girls’ blushes and glimmering eyes than Ko had ever seen on even a real human’s face. 

Ko grimaced, glancing across the rest of the covers to find similar levels of emotionality, sensitivity, vulnerability, proximity - it made her antsy. “D-don’t you have anything less… saccharine?” she asked, dropping the print and picking up another one. She felt overwhelmed. “I’m a little um… out of my depth, l-let’s say, when it comes to this kind of junk.”

“That’s why I’m here to help you, darling!” Hazuki gushed, giving Ko an invasive side-hug. “With your stoic, sincere and straightforward style of love - and my vast knowledge of lesbian activities and guidance - we’re sure to win the forgiveness of Toyama-san in a oneshot!” She let Ko go while she grabbed a particularly lecherous pair of volumes and discreetly hid them beneath the mass of the pile.

Ko felt queasy. The thought of being honest, open and vulnerable made her want to crawl into a shell and become a crab. “This is stupid,” she whined, “Why can’t I just tell Rin I made a mistake and I’m sorry for hurting her? And we can put all of this behind us and go back to normal…”

Hazuki squinted at Ko over the top of a volume of Blend S. “You’re a bit blunt, dear, so I guess I’ll be blunt too,” she sighed, closing the manga and gathering her thoughts. Ko waited.

“You saw as much as I saw, didn’t you?” Hazuki gestured, “Clearly, Rin is a little more than _‘hurt’_ right now - more than just _‘a mistake’_ would make. The fact of the matter is - it’s precisely the ‘ _normal’_ that she finds unsatisfying.”

Ko frowned. She crossed her arms and held them close to her body, glancing down at the table and wincing through blushing cheeks. “Y-you don’t need to be so loud, you know…” she muttered.

Hazuki tilted her head and smiled. “Oh, don’t be so glum, chum,” Hazuki said in a warm, maternal tone. She embraced Ko awkwardly around her crossed arms, petting her head to quell her anxiousness. Ko found it weird but oddly comforting. She sighed into Hazuki’s shoulder.

Then Hazuki pulled away, pointing strongly to the sky and announcing, “Yes, Yagami - what you need is an _arc_ \- and we will find you guidance in doujin!”

Ko bit her tongue, wanting to laugh and cry and cringe all at the same time. “S-seriously, you can quiet down, y’know… this is an open conference area, after all” she said.

Hazuki ignored her. “I’ve also taken the liberty of pulling some cosplay out of my storage closet,” she announced, revealing a rack of clothes from behind a corridor wall with a strong yank. Ko yelped, shocked by the sheer mass of outfits Hazuki was casually wheeling her way.

She blushed again as she lifted her hands defensively. “H-hold on, now!!” she objected. “We never said anything about playing dress-up! And why do you have so many costumes at work??”

Hazuki frowned, leaning against the rack of cosplay items. She had a look on her face as if Ko had asked the most obvious and daft question. “Don’t ask such obvious and daft questions,” she advised, picking a sharp blazer from the ream of clothes. “If you’re going to apologize to your lover, you need to look the part! That’s how they do it in all the manga!”

While she spoke, Ko meekly approached the rack and lifted the sleeve of something lacy, shear, and bubblegum-pink. Her face burned to the tips of her ears. “Rin better appreciate all this...” she muttered to herself. Memories flooded her mind of fancy occasions of times gone bye; Ko had been forced to dress up and Rin had tricked her into an impromptu photo-shoot. Ko was always deathly embarrassed to put effort into her feminine image, but at least Rin thought she was cute. Ko blushed yet again and buried her face in clothes.

“Try on this one, to start,” Hazuki instructed, thrusting upon Ko a hastily-assembled ensemble of deep, stony tones and strong lines. “I know how much you hate femmey clothes,” she went on, “Never mind how adorably you work the ‘shy, embarrassed maiden’ motif… but this time, let’s try something a bit more butch.”

“I have no idea what any of those words mean,” Ko said, lifting the business-casual collection and examining it against her body. “Oh, wow,” she remarked, “this actually looks… pretty sharp!”

Hazuki beamed, hands on her hips, sparkling with pride. “I know how to dress my girls!” she boasted as Ko began to unzip her skirt and strip, right in the middle of the open workfloor. 

Hazuki tipped her glasses; they flashed as she explained in a cool and devilish voice, “I have compiled a detailed catalogue of optimal outfits for each of my employees, in the event that they quickly need to dress for a moment of romance or drama.”

“That’s an insane waste of company resources - not to mention how much it makes you look like a creep,” Ko remarked wryly, tossing her skirt aside and lifting a pair of stretchy black hosiery. 

Hazuki waved her hand dismissively over her shoulder. “It’s a write-off. Anyway,” she brought her hand to her chin, biting and squeezing thoughtfully. “We’re missing something, here… you need to _practice_ an apology, so we need someone you can apologize _to_.”

It was at that moment that Umiko appeared from a corridor on the side of the floor. She was positively glowing; little maroon flowers could manifest in the air around her head at any moment. She passed by the open area Ko and Hazuki populated, but she paid them no mind. Her mind was a million miles away; she didn’t even notice them.

Hazuki spotted her out of the corner of her eye. Umiko had never looked so happy in all her years at Eagle Jump. She might have even been smiling. Hazuki gasped in delight. _What a rarity!!_

“Ah, Umiko- _cha-an~!!_ ” she called, smiling from ear to ear, waving like a belle. “Oh you’ve arrived just in time, I could really use your help for-,”

Umiko’s expression fell the distance between finding a twenty and finding a used condom. Her eyes were fire, bright blue and piercing. All around her body manifested an aura of glassy, tempered rage and murderous intent. As her eyes fell, affixed dead to Hazuki’s countenance, they bored two laser holes right through her skull.

Hazuki froze; sweat beaded chillingly on her neck; she felt like prey that knew it’d been spotted. _Wh-what’s this icy cold fury out of the blue…_ ? She thought. _This is not Umiko’s usual annoyed aura… this is advanced annoyance!!_

Umiko held Hazuki’s gaze for more than a few tense heartbeats. Then, she blinked and turned away, continuing on towards the programming bay in silence. Her angry aura fell off in waves as Hazuki went from her sight, and in no time at all her earlier joy was restored. Her face glowed like warm honey, shining out like a floodlight before her. A spooked intern leapt quickly out of the way as she passed.

Hazuki watched her disappear around a corner and bounced her hands on her hips. “Well, I wonder what’s got her knickers in a knot!” she sputtered, clicking her tongue like a disappointed mother. 

“You probably did something to piss her off,” Ko offered, bouncing on one foot. She was struggling to hop into a pair of black cosplay tights.

“Preposterous!” Hazuki turned her nose to the air and tossed her hair over one shoulder, fluffing it as she mused. “I’ve never been less than delightful to my darling Umiko. She probably just got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Yeah, that’s-,” Ko said, proceeding to slip on her heel and fall against the table of doujin while attempting to put on tights one leg at a time while standing up.

Hazuki ignored the commotion and paced a little. “If Umiko wants to be a sourpuss this morning, so be it! I’ll talk to her again after she’s had her coffee. Anyway,” she clasped her hands together and extended her pointer fingers, balancing them on her chin thoughtfully. “That still leaves us needing one more hand….”

“Hazuki-san,” a cool voice suddenly piqued from behind the pair. Christina Yamato brushed a lock of hair from her face, and tapped on the very important-looking clipboard she held in her hands. “I need your response on a rather urgent matter. It seems that progress has stalled in the programming bay,” she explained.

She flipped the page of her report. “They’re almost at a standstill, not wanting to continue until they receive some rumored spec changes? According to this, the stall began last night around six-,”

Hazuki suddenly noticed Christina’s appearance. “Yamato-san! What? I don’t care!” she gaffed, seizing Christina’s wrist and pulling her closer. Gripping Christina’s shoulders, she directed her towards ko. “More importantly, we need your assistance for an urgent experiment! We have to work fast - the emotional topology of all _Eagle Jump_ is at stake!”

“Wh-what? Hey, wait-!!” Christina objected. She spotted Ko, pantless except for some panties and hosiery, leaning against a table covered in lewd-looking manga - and Christina’s face flushed. “H-hold on, now!! Wh-what’s going on here??” All the while, Hazuki cackled deviously.


	7. a mysterious mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umiko returns to the programming bay. Nene and Naru become detectives

Umiko arrived in the programming bay. Seeing Hazuki along the way had left a sour taste in her mouth, but she’d finally knackered those feelings away and returned to her fluffy, romantic mood. Her mind was now filled with thoughts of Okinawan wine, maroon hair, and future dates.

Umiko had enjoyed crushes in the past, however few and far-between. Most of the time she paid them no mind. It was easy to turn instead to work or hobbies; but Rin worked in the same building as Umiko. On the same floor, even! At any moment Umiko could see Rin’s familiar silhouette around a corner and be flooded with warm, fuzzy feelings all over again.

Umiko did not dislike the prospect, nor the feelings in question. But unlike most of the hormonal harlots she worked for, Umiko could put a cap on it and get to work. Sitting finally at her desk, she sighed and booted her C++ IDE. Responsibilities and plans and stacks of works filed lazily to the front of her mind, but a cheery tune chirped in her heart all the while.

It wasn’t long before she found herself distractedly browsing social media - curious to see if she was already friends with Rin or not. 

=====

“Good morning, Umiko-san!” pipped the voice of a bubbly blonde over the edge of Umiko’s cubicle. The giggly once-intern was standing on her knees in her own spinny chair, peering over the wall between Umiko’s office and her own.

“Sakura-san,” Umiko greeted Nene with a smile. Usually, Umiko didn’t have the time or patience to give to Nene’s endless conversational moods. But Umiko was particularly joyful today… for some mysterious reason.

Nene spotted her glowing aura immediately. “Umiko-san!” she said, leaping into an anecdote. She wanted to take advantage of Umiko’s good mood while she could, to share a very important story (she also wanted to procrastinate the day’s work just a bit longer).

The other day Nene had been getting coffee, so she said, when she found the foam on top was shaped roughly like Umiko’s face. Using a toothpick, Nene had precisely drawn Umiko’s iconic single hair across the coffee-woman’s face to complete the portrait. (The image of herself in a surgical room working intensely to save Umiko’s ahoge had also filled her mind in the moment, but she didn’t tell Umiko about that part).

She showed Umiko a picture. Umiko saw a lumpy, disgruntled-looking woman made of latte foam. “You see!! Like looking in a caffeinated mirror!” Nene insisted, positively sparkling. “I spent too long drawing and the coffee got too cold to drink, though…”

Umiko didn’t see the resemblance. “Ah, that’s-”

Nene’s face was suddenly pushed away by a second junior programmer’s hand, and Tsubame Narumi’s head appeared over the cubicle wall. “Umiko-san! Good morning,” she cheerily greeted.

“Naru-san,” Umiko sighed, relieved to have been pulled away from Nene’s coffee divinations. “Good morning.”

Nene whined. “No fair, Umiko-san! You call her Naru instead of Narumi, but you won’t call me Nene?”

“It’s just a syllable.” Umiko rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. Nene and Naru reminded Umiko of all her hyper little cousins.  _ Youths will be youthful, I suppose... _

Nene groaned and cried. Naru stuck her tongue out at Nene teasingly. Then, she cried too. “It’s so lonely over here without you, Umiko,” she whined. “Ever since you got your own cubicle away from the junior programmers, I feel like there’s a wall between us!” She dramatically extended her arm over the cubicle wall towards Umiko’s face, like a woman bidding adieu to her voyaging lover’s ship.

Umiko chuckled, shooing Naru’s hand away. “It’s just an inch of foam board,” she explained.

Naru continued to gripe. While Umiko began her work, Naru droned on. She divulged all the current petty dramas of the programming bay. “And I showed a demo to the planning team - and what they said! Can you believe?”

Umiko could not believe.

Meanwhile, Nene’s attention fell elsewhere. Her eyes began to focus, nearly crossing. Her spinny chair tipped dangerously forward as Nene blinked and leaned closer and closer. She was looking at Umiko’s face. There seemed to be a mark of some kind… on her cheek? Nene squinted and hemmed and hawed, the gears of her mind churning.

_ Zap! _ The lightning of epiphany flashed in her mind as Nene gasped and identified the mark. Small and subtle atop Umiko’s skin, there was the shape of a chaste kiss - a perfunctory peck - made with lipstick of a deep maroon shade.

Nene popped to attention, interrupting Naru’s gossip. “Umiko-san!” she announced. “You’ve got a-!”

Naru slapped her hand over Nene’s mouth. “-new top on, today!” she finished Nene’s sentence, laughing stiffly. “It looks good on you! Is it name-brand?”

“Hm? This old thing?” Umiko glanced down at her chest. She was wearing a simple greensleeve sweater. “Ah, I slept in this last night, that’s all,” she explained, tugging at the soft fabric. Then she stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I suppose I don’t usually wear pajama shirts to work, so it’s no wonder you’ve never seen it before.”

Naru laughed a bit too loudly at that. Nene tried to object, “B-but Umiko-san! There’s a-!”

Naru subtly slipped her foot against the wheels of Nene’s chair. It slid backwards as Nene fell from her precarious perch, crashing against the wall of the cubicle and slipping to the floor.  _ “BWEH!” _

“-job waiting for us to start!” Naru finished Nene’s sentence again. “Always a pleasure catching up, Umiko-san!”

“L-likewise…” Umiko stammered, worriedly watching for Nene’s head to reappear over the cubicle wall. It did; Nene the indestructible gripped the wall with both hands and pulled her chin up to its edge, groaning in pain. Umiko sighed internally with relief.

But Naru was quick to wrap her arm around Nene’s shoulders and pull her away. “Come on, Nenecchi! Back to work for us.”

Umiko waved as the pair finally disappeared and sighed, surprisingly drained from her interaction with the youthful junior programmers.  _ Like taking care of hyperactive pets… _ Umiko pondered. Finally, she returned to her work in peace.

“Let’s see what the rest of the bay has gotten done since last night,” Umiko whispered. She’d been forced to leave early for her ‘date’ with Hazuki. Hopefully the junior programmers were as productive as they were energetic. But Umiko knew that was wishful thinking.

She connected to the communal git repository for the programming bay’s latest project. To her surprise, she found the most recent commit timestamped for nearly eighteen hours ago. 

After doing a little investigating, Umiko came to realize that the entire programming bay was at a stand-still. “We’re still waiting to receive some spec-changes from the higher-ups…” explained one of Umiko’s DMs. “Sorry boss ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯” graciously offered another.

Umiko felt her usual smoldering annoyance rise within her, seating itself at the base of her stomach. She knew just the silver-haired devil to throttle for the slowdown. 

“For now, just fix bugs,” Umiko wrote in a digital announcement. “Even if we have to throw some of it out, we won’t have to throw everything out. Let’s not lose any more time than we have to.”

She hit send and slumped in her chair, pinching her forehead with one hand. She was already wiped out, in less than an hour of work.  _ Even when she does nothing, Shizuku is still infuriating… _

Memories of Umiko’s night prior came flooding back to her. She clicked her tongue. “Infuriating  _ especially _ when she does nothing…” she whispered.

=====

Meanwhile, Naru pulled Nene back into the junior programming bay, wheeling their chairs a safe distance from Umiko’s lone cubicle. Nene peered over Naru’s arm as Umiko’s cubicle wall grew more distant.

She looked to Naru. “Why did you stop me?” Nene asked. “Umiko’s got a lipstick kiss on her cheek!”

“I know, I know!” Naru whispered, holding a finger to Nene’s lips. Then she retracted it, pointing it upward to punctuate a list. “First of all,” she said, eyes gleaming mischievously, “I think it’s funny Umiko hasn’t noticed yet, and I wanna see how long it’ll take her to realize on her own.”

Nene snickered. “You’re so mean!”

“Secondly,” Naru pulled Nene in close, closing her arm around Nene’s shoulders, huddling up to her and whispering in a serious and deadly voice. “That lipstick kiss looked pretty dang fresh, didn’t it? It did to me.”

“I-It was still reflecting light, even!!” Nene gasped. She  _ had  _ noticed, but not consciously. Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the programming bay, Umiko’s cheek was practically wet with maroon makeup.

“That means it was recent,” Naru deduced, “and  _ that  _ means that the culprit-kisser is someone at  _ Eagle Jump _ !” She blew apart from Nene, sending her wheeling across the wide communal cubicle. Naru struck a declarative pose and announced, “Someone in this building is mackin’ on our programming mom!”

“So scary!!” Nene cried.

“Get to work!!” Umiko shouted from behind an inch of foam board, and the two junior programmers winced. They quickly wheeled back together, huddling conspiratorially and giggling between each other like girls at a slumber party.

“It’s up to us to find out who’s the crazed kisser, kissin’ cheeks all willy-nilly in this department!” Naru whisper-shouted.

“Could it have been Hazuki-senpai?” Nene offered, fists balled with determination and deduction. “She’s got a  _ probable motive _ , and a history of flirting with Umiko!!”

Naru leaned back in her chair and began to stroke her chin thoughtfully, smirking all the while like a cheesy Sherlock ripoff. “A novel, yet novice conjecture, my dear kouhai,” she chuckled dramatically. 

“I’ve been working here longer than you!!” Nene objected.

“The key to this conundrum is in the  _ color _ ,” Naru ignored Nene’s whines and went on, “the kiss was a very distinct shade of reddish-purple, also known as  _ maroon _ . This is not a standard shade of lipstuff!!”

Nene pursed her lips and touched her chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I think I’ve seen it before-”

“If we find the girl wearing matching lipstick!” Naru interrupted, standing up dramatically, “we’ll find our culprit!” She got up and grabbed a jacket from the back of her spinny chair, throwing it around her shoulders like a detective’s coverall. “Come on, Nenecchi!! We’ve got a mystery to solve!”

Nene scrambled to follow her, rushing out of the cubicle with barely enough time to grab her own scarf “W-wait, Naru!! What about fixing bugs??”

After a moment it became very quiet in the junior programmers’ communal cubicle, as the remaining coders drilled softly away at their keyboard. It was so quiet that it caught Umiko’s attention from the next cubicle over. Standing at her desk, just high enough to peer over the cubicle wall behind her monitor, she saw Naru and Nene’s chairs out in the middle of the wing. The girls themselves were nowhere to be seen.

Umiko inhaled sharply through her nose, anticipating the spike of managerial rage in her heart. But it subsided just as quickly as it came, massaged by the gentle glowing memories of Rin’s embrace earlier that morning. Umiko just sighed, replacing her chair in front of her desk and returning to work. “Whatever,” she muttered.  _ It’s no big deal _ , she thought.  _ It’s not like they can really get anything done until Hazuki delivers her-...  _

Umiko caught herself grinning. She put her monitor to sleep. A mini coffee machine to the side of her work station suddenly dinged, filling her ‘I’d Rather Be Shooting’ mug with a decadent, sugary brew. She picked it up and felt the comforting, heavy warmth in her palms and fingers, and she blew carefully over the mocha’s creamy surface.

Leaning back in her chair, Umiko took a long, slow sip. She kicked her feet up onto her desk and chilled out. She brushed her fingers through her hair and pulled it over her shoulders for more comfortable laying.

_ …Done all I can do _ , she thought to herself. She snickered, and began to doze.


End file.
